"He joked at the time about using the animal to get around traffic-jammed Paris," The Guardian reports. "But he chose in the end to leave it with a family in the town on the edge of the Sahara desert."

Unfortunately, The Telegraph reports, Jean-Yves Le Drian, France's defense minister, said "the family apparently wasted no time slaughtering the animal and putting it in a traditional tagine."

But not to worry. The Guardian reports that a government official from Mali says they will replace the old camel with "a bigger and better looking camel."

"The new camel will be sent to Paris," the official said. "We are ashamed of what happened to the camel. It was a present that did not deserve this fate."

We'll leave you with a remembrance. It's video of Hollande receiving his gift: